Audio on board The Ark

The Ark Post Production is in the middle of installing its first dedicated audio room at its new building in north London. The Avid C24 and Pro Tools 11 (product pictured) theatre is part of premises at Royal College Street in Camden, which will operate in tandem with The Ark's established Soho facilities.

Technical consultant Dave Carstairs says fitting out of the new 5.1 suite, with adjacent voice booth, should begin next week. Carstairs comments that the move into audio is a "new departure" for The Ark, which previously had only handled sound in its video editing rooms. "But there is now a requirement to put in a dubbing suite to support our editing operations," he explains. "The work we've been doing is mainly in re-versioning and now we can do the audio part of that in dubbing."

The Ark works in different video frame rates for international distribution, which is paralleled on the sound side by various national loudness standards, including the US A/85 and Australian OP 59, as well as R128 for the UK and mainland Europe. The company has been using Emotion System's eFF (Emotion File Finish) file-based monitoring and correction program on 16 audio tracks in its editing facilities and will now also use the system in the new dubbing room.

A dubbing mixer will be brought in to run the audio facility but while The Ark is looking at candidates Carstairs says no one has yet been selected for the post.

The final technical sign off was made yesterday (30 October) in the audio facilities of Evolutions new post-production operation in Bristol. The new dubbing suite features Avid Pro Tools HDX and 11 with an ICON D-Control and is run by head of audio Will Norie.

The audio post-production market in Manchester continues to expand, with established company Flix opening a new dubbing suite and VTR North set to open a facility, featuring a 5.1 room, in the city during April, writes Kevin Hilton.

London post-production facility UNIT has moved into a new building housing three audio mixing suites, in addition to offline editing rooms and visual effects and colour grading facilities, writes Kevin Hilton.